The Lord of the Rings: Conquest Review

Frodo and his fancy little ring are back yet again.

But for all the mediocre gameplay that is dressed with cool moments from the films, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is about its multiplayer. Sixteen players can take part in three modes: Team Deathmatch, Conquest and Capture The One Ring. The best is, unsurprisingly, the titular. Conquest places four flags around the environment and each team's point value increases faster and faster as they gain more and more flags. Teams can earn heroes by gaining all the flags at once, and it facilitates the small strategies that are possible with each class.

Yes, while they may not be all that inventive, there are indeed strategies that you'll see employed in multiplayer and they're essential for success. Mages can use their range shield to house several archers and keep them safe from projectiles. Scouts can charge in behind warriors and use their cloaking ability to assassinate heroes with one quick button press. It's cool when it works, but the options for strategy are ultimately limited. And while you will see players working together, the artificial intelligence is usually just plain stupid; commonly staring at enemy AI soldiers as if performing a sort of timed strike.

Check out LOTR: Conquest action in this gameplay clip (HD Available).

In the end the multiplayer, to a lesser extent, is hit by many of the same pitfalls as the single-player, which is to say that it gets redundant a little too quickly. Its different modes help, but the actions you're performing are the same. It would help if there was some sort of leveling or ranking system for players to earn new pieces of armor or abilities, but sadly there is absolutely nothing of the sort.

Graphically, The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is clearly built for multiplayer, which is to say that it's not exactly impressive. The best looking piece to the puzzle is the environmental pieces that feel like they were designed by Peter Jackson himself (no doubt, they were). Textures are sharper on PC with higher resolutions being afforded, thus everything looks sharper and more detailed. This is especially seen on character models. Framerate doesn't stutter much, but that will likely depend on your system specs and settings in-game.

That's a huge *****!

Luckily the sound performs at a very high level throughout thanks largely to the inclusion of Howard Shore's fantastic theme that thumps throughout the action. Things roll steadily downhill from there with Hugo Weaving delivering a decent performance at the beginning and end of each mission while the mid-level work from Aragorn and Gandalf imposters falls absolutely flat.

The Verdict

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest is a straightforward affair with very little that will pleasantly surprise anyone who played Star Wars: Battlefront. Its combat and general mission structure is by-the-books and the lack of expandability and feeling of redundancy are felt instantly. Withstanding all of that, Conquest still somehow manages to earn merit on its expert use of The Lord of the Rings license. The environments feel like they're straight from the silver screen and Howard Shore's multiple orchestral pieces are great to fight alongside.

Diehard fans of both online, class-based games and The Lord of the Rings might want to invest the sixty bucks, but if redundant and unimaginative gameplay are things you despise, you'll want to steer clear.